This is a good article.

First and foremost I would submit that to believe something is to accept it as if it is true, but the believer does not know it is true. I have written ad nauseam about this, because it is the basis for religion as well as atheist rhetoric. And we hear this phrase, “I believe…” all the time, at every turn. At one point in my life this fact about belief made me begin to question my own beliefs and why I had ever held onto beliefs. At one point I decided to stop believing in anything and it made quite the difference, because I found that beliefs simply took up too much room in my head and emotions. There is just no good point to believing in anything. Many may argue that this could make one paranoid and afraid to even walk into a building because it takes belief in the structure’s integrity to make one feel safe. I disagree. This is all mental and emotional gymnastics and nothing more. It’s hard enough to get someone to see a psychologist for a personal problem, but nearly impossible for most to face, explore, and repudiate their beliefs, because to do so would be to put a crack in the foundation of their psyche.

Next I’d like to say that we cannot make generalizations about religious people, just as we cannot do so about atheists. Though it is difficult to conceive and see, each person is the result of his or her individual manifold psychological conditioning, culture, circumstances, biology, and so on. So, obviously, two people sitting side by side under a evangelist’s tent and crying at their sense of rapture may have little else in common beside their belief in one particular aspect of Christianity. Similarly, though atheists tend to reject the idea of a god or perhaps supreme being, this may be where their commonality ends. We have moderates and radicals in every group. Some buy into, and invest in, the entire belief system wherein others reject most of it; and yet they all remain followers.

Having said all of this, religion does require a belief, or many beliefs. And in this sense it is a breeding ground for absurd ideas, actions, and tendencies. It can be argued, to use your example, that believing in Superman is a bit delusional, but believing that Jesus could walk on water or that a prophet rode a white horse into heaven is hardly any different on the scale of delusional thinking. When is the last time anyone has ever seen such things, honestly speaking?? And yet people flock to watch magicians for entertainment; and many such people believe they are seeing something impossible and perhaps supernatural.

I have noted previously in another thread that I see little difference between cults and religions except that the latter have been around long enough to gain widespread notoriety and societal tolerance (at least until, from time to time, the climate changes and people start killing one another). Cults offer stories and claims that defy logic in the same way that religions do. Take Scientology for instance, and its idea of little aliens inhabiting everyone’s body except perhaps that of a famous actor who also happens to be one of the cult’s biggest financial supporters. Or we have the cult of Eckankar that was started by a Ron Hubbard sycophant named Paul Twitchell. Eckankar’s successor, a man who spent some time in a mental institution named Harold Klemp, has lectured and written about how he is the Godman, modern day prophet, etc. He has claimed to possess magnificent spiritual powers and so on. Did any of Eckankar’s followers fall out when Klemp came out with such absurd claims? Sure, some did, but the cult is still running at full steam, because most followers stayed on. Truth does not serve them as well as fiction does.

I am currently watching a Netflix documentary on Mormons and how a researcher discovered writings written contemporaneously with Joseph Smith’s life. The writings reveal that the official Mormon story is inaccurate and they steal the thunder from Smith. They also show that the story of Mormon isn’t the way it’s been taught for 150 years. Subsequently, the researcher was blown up by a bomb. In the long run, documents that rocked the foundation of Mormonism in the mid 80s have had little effect at all on the rest of the believers. Life goes on for Mormonism as it always had.

Here is the main point, the moral of the story, if you will: Believers want to believe. We could even go so far as to say that they need to believe. This is a frightening, confusing world, and belief in the fantastic pulls people out of the mundanity of existence. And, of course, religion, cults, and even one’s weekly AA meeting or football game offers a respite from the real world and a way to feel more secure in the company of others.

And one more point: You mentioned myth: “The myth just takes certain nonsense for granted…” But myth is actually quite another story than religion. If regarded as metaphor, as myths are supposed to be, they have the power and purpose of guiding a person back to himself to enquire into his own nature; the myth is a reflection of ourselves and an invitation to explore what we are at our core. Religion has no other purpose than to control people and divide them from others through an absurd and implausible (to use your word) belief system. Myth touches the psyche with the ability to transform or wake someone up. I cite the Buddha myth for example, prior to Buddhism becoming a religion of sorts. The supposed “wake-up” that one gleans from religion is most usually nothing more than a pacification of the same ego that has fallen into the trap of belief. There are exceptions, of course, but they are statistically insignificant.

And another one-more-point: We may wonder why religious people even bother trying to argue their beliefs on the merit of facts. My answer is that some of them fundamentally, deep down inside, know that the beliefs are absurd and they are trying to talk themselves and their followers into the absurdities. They are trying to defend their own sense of self and investment. They are doubling down a bet that somehow, some way, an attempt at rational thinking can change the absurdities. We have seen this behavior many times as people try to rationalize murder or some other crime while fully knowing that they are wrong and their crime is indefensible. Making excuses is what human beings do. Lawyers are experts at it.

As a side note here, your example of the shibboleth is out of the pages of a Monty Python script and shows just how far religion can go with an absurdity that will not be rejected its followers.